1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a cellular phone application for driver safety and in particular to a non-intrusive programmed application (app) system and method for a cellular phone of a driver to eliminate a need for the driver to respond to a received text message while driving, the system not interfering with the normal functioning of the cellular phone.
2. Description of Related Art Including Information Disclosed Under 37 CFR 1.97 and 1.98
Texting or using SMS (Short Message Service) involves reading and or writing up to 160 characters on a small screen and using a very small keyboard to type. Texting and driving kills. In 2011, 3,331 people were killed in crashes involving a distracted driver and an additional, 387,000 people were injured in motor vehicle crashes involving a distracted driver. One in five of these deaths and injuries were attributed to texting and driving. Texting and driving is the greatest single cause of driving deaths, even more than drunken driving. A number of drivers of public transportation vehicles, including trains and buses have caused many deaths in a single accident because of texting while operating the vehicle. A person texting and driving is 23 times more likely to be in an accident.
Texting and driving is the most dangerous distraction while driving because it involves the eyes, hands, and mind. It takes an average of 4.5 seconds just to read a text. In that time a vehicle traveling at 55 MPH travels 100 yards. That is the length of a football field driving blind and usually holding the cellphone with both hands and reading and writing and thinking about the text messages. Half of commuting adults and half of teenage drivers admit to texting while driving on a regular basis.
While 96% to 98% of drivers admit that driving and texting is dangerous, still about half of the drivers text and drive. Some people consider texting and driving a habit, just part of multi-tasking to save time.
While there have been a number of attempts to solve the texting and driving problem, most involve shutting down all or some of the functions of a driver's cell phone. Many complaints are made about prior art attempts which disrupt the functioning of their cell phones, especially when the prior art solutions malfunction and disrupt operation of the cell phones even when the person is not driving. People generally do not like any messing with the normal functioning of their cellular phones, which people increasingly depend upon.
The prior art fails to provide an effective means for eliminating the need for a driver to read and/or respond to a text message while driving the vehicle, without inferring with the normal operation of the driver's cell phone.
Ten U.S. patents and two published U.S. patent applications were found related to your invention. None are identical to your DCT invention as far as the details and operation of your invention. So your DCT invention would be patentable over the prior patents found in the search. Your DCT invention makes more sense than most of the other inventions in the patents in terms of how people actually behave with cell phones and the many complaints people have made about how the existing driving and texting apps screw up their phones. They don't want the functions of their phones shut down. Six of the patents found were the same invention by the same two people, Olincy and Fish, but they each claim the same invention in different ways or claim different types of claims for the same invention. Their use of a specific button on the phone or use of existing buttons on the phone together for their invention is always using the button to send an automatic response to an incoming call, or Email, or text message. The button is not used for turning the program on and the program does not send an automatic return message without pushing the button.
U.S. Pat. No. 8,364,183, issued Jan. 31, 2013 to Olincy et al, provides an “I am driving/busy” automatic response system for mobile phones wherein a cell phone which has been modified by the addition of software which responds to the press of one or more Busy keys by automatically sending a pre-typed text message to the sender of the latest text message just received or automatically answering an incoming call immediately upon pressing the Busy key and playing a pre-recorded audio message. The outgoing text or audio message can inform the sender of the incoming text or the caller that the user is driving or otherwise engaged and cannot respond immediately. In some embodiments, one or more Busy keys can be added keys or one or more existing keys on the cell phone or on the keypad of the cell phone or on a touchscreen or a visual depiction of a keypad on a touchscreen of the cell phone.
U.S. Pat. No. 8,249,627, issued Aug. 21, 2012 to Fish and Olincy, discloses an “I am driving/busy” automatic response system for mobile phones wherein a cell phone which has been modified by the addition of software which responds to the press of one or more Busy keys by automatically sending a pre-typed text message to the sender of the latest text message just received or automatically answering an incoming call immediately upon pressing the Busy key and playing a pre-recorded audio message. The outgoing text or audio message can inform the sender of the incoming text or the caller that the user is driving or otherwise engaged and cannot respond immediately. In some embodiments, one or more Busy keys can be added keys or one or more existing keys on the cell phone or on the keypad of the cell phone or on a touchscreen or a visual depiction of a keypad on a touchscreen of the cell phone.
U.S. Pat. No. 8,335,497, issued Dec. 18, 2012 to Olincy et al, indicates an “I am driving/busy” automatic response system for mobile phones wherein a cell phone which has been modified by the addition of software which responds to the press of one or more Busy keys by automatically sending a pre-typed text message to the sender of the latest text message just received or automatically answering an incoming call immediately upon pressing the Busy key and playing a pre-recorded audio message. The outgoing text or audio message can inform the sender of the incoming text or the caller that the user is driving or otherwise engaged and cannot respond immediately. In some embodiments, one or more Busy keys can be added keys or one or more existing keys on the cell phone or on the keypad of the cell phone or on a touchscreen or a visual depiction of a keypad on a touchscreen of the cell phone.
U.S. Pat. No. 8,412,161, issued Apr. 2, 2013 to Olincy et al, puts forth an “I am driving/busy” automatic response system for mobile phones wherein a cell phone which has been modified by the addition of software which responds to the press of one or more Busy keys by automatically sending a pre-typed text message to the sender of the latest text message just received or automatically answering an incoming call immediately upon pressing the Busy key and playing a pre-recorded audio message. The outgoing text or audio message can inform the sender of the incoming text or the caller that the user is driving or otherwise engaged and cannot respond immediately. In some embodiments, one or more Busy keys can be added keys or one or more existing keys on the cell phone or on the keypad of the cell phone or on a touchscreen or a visual depiction of a keypad on a touchscreen of the cell phone.
U.S. Pat. No. 8,315,597, issued Nov. 20, 2012 to Olincy et al, is for an “I am driving/busy” automatic response system for mobile phones wherein a cell phone system which has been modified by the addition of software and hardware to determine the speed of at least phones to which incoming text messages are directed and determine whether or not to send an automated text message response to the sender indicating the user to which the text is directed cannot respond immediately. If such a response message is to be sent, automatically generating and sending said text message. If not, forwarding the text message to the cell phone to which it is directed.
U.S. Pat. No. 8,359,014, issued Jan. 22, 2013 to Olincy et al, concerns a cell phone which has been modified by the addition of software which responds to the press of one or more Busy keys by automatically sending a pre-typed text message to the sender of the latest text message just received or automatically answering an incoming call immediately upon pressing the Busy key and playing a pre-recorded audio message. The outgoing text or audio message can inform the sender of the incoming text or the caller that the user is driving or otherwise engaged and cannot respond immediately. In some embodiments, one or more Busy keys can be added keys or one or more existing keys on the cell phone or on the keypad of the cell phone or on a touchscreen or a visual depiction of a keypad on a touchscreen of the cell phone. In some embodiments, only the text of the automated reply message is entered automatically, and all other commands to launch the SMS service, select the text message to reply to and send the automated reply message are manually given.
U.S. Pat. No. 8,320,884, issued Nov. 27, 2012 to Khanna et al, claims a user device which receives information associated with the user device, and detects movement of the user device. The user device also determines whether the movement is greater than a threshold velocity, and determines, when the movement is greater than the threshold velocity, whether the user device is located in a moving motor vehicle based on the information associated with the user device. The user device further places functionality of the user device in a semi-locked state when the user device is located in a moving motor vehicle.
U.S. Pat. No. 8,401,589, issued Mar. 19, 2013 to Liu et al, provides controlled text-based communication on mobile devices wherein devices, systems, and methods are disclosed for managing text-based services on mobile devices during the operation of a vehicle. Proactive service-controls use a time of day and location based services to determine that a mobile device is in a moving vehicle. Reactive position-awareness techniques use near-field communication (NFC) to determine that the mobile device is being operated by a user in a driver's seat of the vehicle. Upon satisfying both these determinations, specific text-based services such as messaging, browsing, etc. can be disabled by either the mobile device itself or by a network entity. The present invention can also be extended to managing other mobile device's usages in vehicles, including phone calls, online gaming, etc.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,898,428, issued Mar. 1, 2011 to Dietz et al, shows a mobile device configured to have at least one function disabled when a speed of the mobile device exceeds a threshold. The mobile device includes an output component configured to provide a notification related to disabling the at least one function. The mobile device also includes a first input component configured to promote controlling whether to disable the at least one function.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,799,034, issued Sep. 28, 2004 to Higuchi et al, describes a cellular mobile telephone apparatus having circuits for generating messages, a storage circuit for storing messages, and transmitter/receiver circuit or transmitting a message. When the user of the cellular mobile telephone apparatus cannot immediately respond to an incoming call, a desired one of a plurality of previously generated and stored messages can be transmitted to a calling party through simple key manipulations or by other means.
U.S. Patent Application #20120329444, published Dec. 27, 2012 to Osann, describes systems and methods are to allow safe texting with speech-text conversion for vehicle drivers, with provisions to prevent a user from defeating or bypassing the speech-text conversion. Some embodiments include a special software application in a driver's phone while other embodiments require only software changes at a service provider. If the velocity of a phone exceeds a disable threshold, it is assumed that the user may be texting while driving. That the user is a driver is then determined by one or more of multiple methods including registration. Conventional texting is then disabled for their phone and a safe texting capability is enabled instead. Where persons in the same vehicle utilize different service providers, parameters such as for instance cell phone position, velocity, and direction of travel are time stamped and passed between service providers or alternately made available to other service providers via a central database.
U.S. Patent Application #20080143548, published Jun. 19, 2008 by Grimmelmannet al, claims a method of enabling one or more senders to simultaneously alert one or more contacts located anywhere around the world over one or more communication networks, each contact having at least one communication device for receiving alert data. The method including the steps of generating and maintaining one or more scenarios each including a set of destination contacts selected from the one or more contacts, a composition of alert data, and delivery rules; initiating execution of at least one of the scenarios to send the alert data to each contact in the set of destination contacts; and managing sending of the alert data by applying the delivery rules.
What is needed is a means for eliminating the need for a driver to read and/or respond to a text message while driving the vehicle without inferring with the normal operation of the driver's cell phone.